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Coalition urges US to free Mexican journalist

Lorena Figueroa, El Paso Times
Published 6:41 p.m. MT April 4, 2017

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Members of the El Paso-Las Cruces-based Borderland Immigration Council are urging U.S. immigration authorities to release a Mexican journalist who is seeking asylum in the U.S. He is being held at the El Paso Processing Center on the East Side.(Photo: LORENA FIGUEROA/EL PASO TIMES)Buy Photo

The Borderland Immigration Council is urging U.S. immigration officials to release a Mexican journalist seeking asylum.

Martin Mendez Pineda, a 25-year-old journalist from Acapulco in the Mexican southern state of Guerrero, has been at the El Paso Processing Center on the East Side since Feb. 5, when he sought refuge to escape repeated death threats in his hometown.

Although he passed the “credible fear interview” that U.S. authorities use to decide whether there is enough evidence to show that a real threat exists, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials did not let him continue the asylum process freely, immigration lawyer Carlos Spector, who represents Mendez Pineda and is a member of the El Paso-Las Cruces-based council, said Tuesday.

“It seems that there is a binational policy to go after victims of violence in Mexico and detain them — and keep them detained — in the United States. And that policy is being shown in Martin’s case,” Spector said.

ICE officials said they do not comment on pending asylum cases.

Spector claimed that the agency denied Martin’s parole because he is a flight risk and that he might not appear at his immigration court hearings. Spector said those reasons are illogical.

“How is he going to flee and to where, if he is the one asking U.S. authorities for protection,” Spector asked?

Martin was a reporter at the Acapulco daily newspaper, Novedades. He reported on the abuse of power and intimidation tactics of Mexican federal police who had arrested a person involved in a minor collision on Feb. 22, 2016.

A few weeks later, armed individuals beat him and threatened to kill him outside of his home. He then quit his job and reported the incident to Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission.

Despite that, the intimidation continued and Mendez Pineda decided to flee to the United States.

Spector said ICE’s denial of Martin’s parole request “signals an inhumane criminalization of the asylum process, as well as a blanket policy of imprisoning Mexican refugees fleeing state violence.”

He said his client should have only been detained a few weeks and released in March. Now he is at risk of having his asylum case process detained for months or even years until an immigration judge decides his fate.

For Dylan Corbett, director of Hope Border Institute, Mendez Pineda is a clear victim of President Donald Trump’s anti-immigration policies and the tightening of immigration laws on asylum seekers.

“This is another example of how Trump’s policies criminalizing not only undocumented immigrants, but asylum seekers,” said Corbett, who is also member of the council. “These policies are designed to intimidate, harass and abuse migrants from seeking refuge in the United States.”

Corbett mentioned that in the council’s report “Discretion to Deny,” published in February, U.S. government agencies are allegedly using tactics to “remove asylum seekers and keep people in a situation of prolonged detention.”

“We call on ICE to release Martin Mendez Pineda without delay,” Emmanuel Colombie, the head of the advocacy group Reporters Without Borders, said in a written statement.

“This journalist, who has been persecuted and threatened with death in his country, must be allowed to present his case for political asylum freely and with dignity before an immigration judge,” Colombie added.

Currently, Mexico is ranked as the deadliest country for reporters in the Western Hemisphere, according to Reporters Without Borders.

Since 2000, more than 100 journalists have been killed in Mexico, including Juárez and Chihuahua City. The bloodiest year was 2016, when 11 journalists were killed, according to Article 19, a human rights-organization that defends and promotes freedom of expression and information.

So far in 2017, three journalists have been killed, including longtime Chihuahua journalist Miroslava Breach Velducea, 54, who was an editor with the Norte newspaper in Juárez and was a correspondent for La Jornada national newspaper.

She was attacked by gunmen on March 23 when she was leaving her home to take her son to school in Chihuahua City.

Her death prompted Norte newspaper in Juárez to shut down its daily printed edition because the rampant, unpunished killings of journalists makes it too dangerous to go on.

Norte executive Oscar Cantu Murguia informed readers of his decision in a farewell letter titled "Adios!" that was published on the paper's front page and online Sunday.

In an interview with El Diario de Juárez newspaper on Tuesday, Cantu Murguia said he also was planning to shut Norte’s website, but did not say when.